Syntax Examples

Find all documents containing the word 'cat' in only the abstract. (‘ABST’ can be replaced with the abbreviation for any text field)

cat AND dog

Find all documents containing both the word 'cat' and the word 'dog'. The two words may be in different fields.

ABST/cat AND dog

Find all documents containing the word 'cat' in the abstract, and the word 'dog' in any field.

TTL/cat NOT dog

Find all documents containing the word 'cat' in the title, but do not include any documents which have the word 'dog' in any field.

(cat OR dog) AND (leash OR fence)

Find all documents that contain either the word 'cat' or the word 'dog', and which also contain either the word 'leash' or the word 'fence.' Note that without the parenthesis this query would be interpreted in an entirely different manner due to binding order of AND versus OR. Parenthesis are very helpful in making sure your query mean what you intend.

Dates, Date Ranges, and Date Math

Query

Description

APD/12/14/2000

Find documents with only this specific application date. (‘APD’ can be replaced with any date field)

APD/12/14/2000->12/31/2005

Find all documents with an application date between the first date and the second date, inclusive.

APD/12/14/2000->NOW

‘NOW’ is a convenient way to specify “today” in dates. Note that in Alerts and Saved Searches, ‘NOW’ automatically takes on the meaning the current day.

APD/NOW-1YEAR->NOW

APD/NOW-9MONTH->NOW

APD/1/1/2000+600DAY->NOW

Dates may be added or subtracted. Legal values include DAY, MONTH, YEAR, NOW and literal dates. Excellent for automatically updating date windows in Saved Searches and Alerts, and for finding in-force patents without typing the date each time (e.g., to always find patents applied for no more than 20 years ago, use APD/NOW-20YEAR->NOW).

Advanced Functions

Query

Description

[with word stemming on] electroplate

Find all forms of the word 'electroplate', including 'electroplated', 'electroplating', and 'electroplater'. Word stemming is based on language rules and may not find all forms of all words (to be more inclusive, use wildcards).

“cat dog”

Phrase query. Find the phrase “cat dog” with no intervening words, in that order. Wildcards are not allowed (e.g., “cat do*”).

"cat dog"~5

Proximity query. Find all documents containing the word 'cat' within 5 words of 'dog'. The 5 may be replaced with any whole number.

cat^5 OR dog

Search term weighting. ‘Cat’ is 5 times more important to the relevancy of matching documents than ‘dog’. Find all documents containing the word 'cat' or 'dog' but, all other things being equal, rank the documents containing cat higher. The "5" may be replaced with any whole number.

cat*

Unlimited Character Wildcard. Find documents containing words starting with ‘cat’ like cats, cathode, category, etc. Useful when you need to be more inclusive than word stemming allows.

do?

Single-character Wildcard. Find all documents containing words that has only one character after 'do' like doe, dog, dot, etc.